VTS Pre-Test

I conducted my VTS pre-assessment with my school's smallest kindergarten class. Three students were out, so thirteen students were present. Kindergarten class periods are twenty minutes long, so I dedicated a class period to VTS. I knew ahead of time that they weren't focusing on the screen for long periods of time at their seats, so I moved the tables out of the way and put stars on the floor to mark places to sit. I taped the pre-test and the end of the second week of school. It took a while to get all the media release forms signed.  We had a bumpy start since the students were easily distracted and noticed the sounds of fifth graders going to lunch. But once we took care of business, counted bug bites, and put on band aids, I was able to communicate the rules about how to behave when the class is talking about an artwork. 
     The class as a whole noticed that the figures were ice skating, and some said they were dancing on the ice. A lot of attention was paid to the figures falling down. The students remarked that the ice was green, and near the end of the discussion one girl said the artist had made a mistake. The students also commented a lot on the black and white paint strokes on the ice. The varied opinions were that they were penguins, paint, tire tracks, brown under the ice, and stripes left by a tiger running across the ice. The students began noticing items in the foreground, then noticed things "far away" in the background, moved back up front, to the sides, and up front again. The students also found matches in the painting. One student pointed out that the sky and the ice were both the same color. Then other students found matches in colors and styles of clothing. Quite a few students found humor in trying to understand the overlapping figures, as in "that lady has three legs,"  "that lady has a stick coming out of her mouth," and "that ice skate is on that other person." 
    The students exhibited many characteristics of level one viewers. During the first half of the discussion, many personal associations were made when describing what the students saw. One girl talked about dance class when pointing out the dance like  movements of the figures. Another talked about playing in the snow and getting cold. Someone talked about falling down. The students talked often about the colors they saw. Some of the students "knew" that water was blue, and the sky and ice should have been painted blue. When trying to describe aspects of the painting they didn't understand yet, such as space and overlap, the students found humor and laughed out loud. The students moved around inside the painting while talking about it.
     I was surprised that this class was engaged and stayed seated the whole period. I was able to add the question, "What do you find to make you say that?" from time to time, and the students could give evidence for their observations. Another big surprise for me was how their observations seem to take paths around the painting.